If you have major problem such as your email going down or your server not working, it is now possible to alert us via text message at anytime of the day including weekends.

This is particularly useful if the issue occurs outside of office hours or you don't have access to email.

 

How to use the Major Service Outage (MSO) text message system

1. Create a text message to 020 3095 1166 (or +4420 3095 1166 if abroad)
   
2. Start the text message with the letters 'MSO' to inform us that it is a Major Service Outage (and therefore an emergency)
3. If you want us to contact you on a different number than you are texting from, please put your phone number and include any international dialling codes if you are abroad.
4. State your company name (in a short, recognisable form where appropriate)
5. State the problem in it's shortest and simplest form (for example "server dead" or "email down") try to keep it less than 5 words if you can.

If you are part of a larger office, please don't assume that someone else will alert us. In fact the more MSO's we receive from a company, the quicker we can realise it is a "global" problem rather than a single persons issue and therefore respond accordingly.

Q: What is the minimum on-site charge?

A: As we do not have call-out charges, we've made our minimum on-site time 2 hours, this way the customer is encouraged to put jobs and tasks together to make things more efficient for both parties.
However we recognise that sometimes emergencies or quick responses are needed that require short in-site visits. In these cases we include the travel time (typically 30 minutes or less for London businesses). So an example onsite call where the customer was 20 minutes away and 10 minutes onsite would be counted as 50 minutes.

The charges for these on-site visits will be according to the method of invoicing.

 

Q: Am I charged for calling to ask about work performed or invoices?

A: No, not at all. Time is only charged for when work is performed on your behalf to install, maintain or fix problems.

 

 

Need to make a payment? Then go to our payment page

Support

Invoice - 30 day terms

• Hourly rate ............................... £90 p/hr
• 1 month trial period for new clients in London .. £60 p/hr

"Pay as you go"

• 200 minutes ............................... £250 (£75 p/hr)
• 500 minutes ............................... £500 (£60 p/hr)
• 1000 minutes ............................. £900 (£54 p/hr)

Pay-as-you-go procedure

1. To receive time, email accounts@runpcrun.com and request the block of time required.
   
2. A pro-forma invoice will be issued.
3. Pay the pro-forma invoice.
   
4. Once the pro-forma invoice is paid, the time is credited to your account.

Pay-as-you-go terms and conditions

1. Pay-as-you-go time and time usage is calculated from the start to the end of each calendar month.
2. Pay-as-you-go time does not expire. Refunds of unused time are permissible on request.
3. All engineer time is recorded by the minute in our online helpdesk and a monthly statement is printed or available as PDF.
4. Accounts with negative time balance at the end of a calendar month are charged on 30 day invoice terms on the remaining balance.
   
5. All prices are for on-site, phone and remote work. On-site work has a 2 hour minimum. All prices are excluding VAT.
6. Business hours only - 9am -> 6pm, Mon -> Fri. Prices for work outside these hours are available on application.
7. Clients with a server are advised to allocate a specified amount of pay-as-you-go time per month to reduce support costs and authorising pro-active server maintenance checks and work to be carried out.

 

 

Additional services and products

SMTP Relay

For customers with their own mail servers:-

SMTP Relay Service with Spam and Virus filter - £30 per quarter.

Outlook/Exchange email

Hosted Microsoft Outlook / Exchange - £14 per mailbox per month.

Online Backup

Back your data up safely outside your office - £5 per server (or workstation) + £5 per 10Gb per month.

e.g. to back up 40Gb of data on a server it will cost £5 + (4x£5) = £25 per month

Microsoft Office 2003/2007 Training

One day training course for any Microsoft Office product (Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook etc) - £215 per day.

There are 3 levels of training - Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced (4 for Access)

Where we came from

Versado I.T. Services was founded in 1997 and was operated as a training company by Jamie Neil. He provided tailored courses on a variety of technical subjects, from datacommunications and networking foundation courses to Cisco router configuration and IPv6. During this time, runPCrun was envisaged by Chris Wolfe in 1999 as a high-value outsourced IT support department for SME's, as well as what was seen as the coming of the "information worker". Dan White joined runPCrun as a director in early 2003.

In late 2003, Chris, Dan and Jamie joined forces trading was commenced under the runPCrun brand name for all support work, while hosting and training was continued under the Versado name. Jamie Neil then left in 2007 to join GPMD as a developer and technology director. In this move the hosting operations were passed over to GPMD in-line with Jamies expertise and experience as well as the web development services they provide.

The runPCrun Team

• Chris Wolfe - Bsc Computer Science at Manchester Victoria University in 1992 where he met co-founder Jamie Neil. Since then Chris worked in a variety of high-profile companies including Solidisk & Penhaligons in varying IT roles, then started development of runPCrun in '99. Chris keeps up with all the latest hardware and is our hardware procurement expert.
• Dan White - Dan worked in the IT contracting sector in the 90's working within companies such as the BBC, Thames Water, Orange and IBM then worked in the NGO sector with IPPF, before joining runPCrun full-time in 2003. Dan's love of software systems and ability to explain IT requirements and issues in plain English has been made part of the core philosophy of our company.
• Sarah Bird - After studying Computing, Engineering & IT Infomatics at Portsmouth University, Sarah worked for the game development company Climax. After this Sarah joined runPCrun in 2005 after passing her A+ exams. Sarah's happy demeanor and reserves of patience make Sarah our 'go-to-girl' for first line customer queries.
• Robin Kemp - Computing Science at University of Greenwich, worked for Hewlett Packard APS while completing his CompTIA A+ in Canada and then returned to the UK in 2008. With his experience in PC and Macintosh computers and his gentle manner has made Robin a firm favourite with customers.

Additional Guest Bloggers

• Jamie Neil - Bsc Computer Science in 1992 from Manchester Victoria University. Since then Jamie has worked in a broad range of IT fields, including Unix systems administration, data network consultancy, telecommunications training and web design. Jamie worked for runPCrun 2003-2006 as a Director and now is part of GPMD, a company we have worked closely with since 2002.

If you are familiar with an engineer by all means contact them directly if you deem it necessary, but if they are busy, unavailable or on-site please follow the following procedures to be dealt with effectively.

If urgent or a priority call :-

Ring 0845 45 01254 and simply hold. This rings all engineers phones enabling any one of us to pickup (unless all lines are currently taken in which case a voicemail system will activate and this will be emailed immediately to all engineers)
Also out-of-hours you may ring the engineers mobile number, if engaged/busy then leave a voice message or text them.

If it is not an urgent call:-

Please email support@runpcrun.net with your query wherever possible, otherwise phone as above.

Tips for emails:-

Try to explain your problem clearly. Note any error messages exactly.
Where possible use the "PRINTSCREEN" key (on the top right of most keyboards). This will copy the entire screen, and can then be pasted into a blank word document and attached to the email. This will make your life easier when complex errors are displayed on screen and allow us to solve it much faster. The entire PRINTSCREEN procedure can be found in detail here.

This post related how to forward email headers to IT support in various popular email clients.

Please note: If you do not know which program (or flavour of Outlook) you use, if you go to Help then About you can find this information out then follow the relevant section.